SS 2 HD - moving the dish via DiSEqC only works occasionally

deep0dark

Friends

I have a PC (running Vista) with a SS 2 HD PCI card, and a motorised (SG2100) 1m dish which is connected to the PC with a 12m coax cable The PC is brand new.

With this setup, I can watch channels, SD and HD, everything works like clockwork.

EXCEPT one thing: moving the motor only works randomly, in 1 out of 10 attempts. I use DVB Dream software, which is the only software I found that can move the antenna at all. Other programs I tried don't move the antenna at all.

What happens is: to move the antenna, I click relevant buttons on the positioning console in DVB Dream, but the dish doesn't move. Finally, after a lot of frantic clicking, re-opening the panel, changing options back-and forth, changing channel on the present satellite, crossing fingers, restarting the PC, restarting DVB Dream, trying to send E0 31 00 via raw DiSEqC, making weird noises resembling antilope in heat... finally, the motor moves. IT MOVES! Everything is fine then. But when I again want to change the satellite, I have to through grueling "process" again. Eventually, it moves again. I have not managed to find ANY logic, it just moves the motor randomly. I even recorded myself on my video camera what I'm doing, and I still could not manage to move the motor when I want to.

Can you please give me any pointers?

The molex power connector is also properly connected to the SS 2 HD card in the PC. Power supply is 500W. The card is properly installed, far from neighboring devices in the computer case.

I would really appreciate any help. Thank you.

deep0dark

I forgot to add: when a regular satellite decoder box is connected to this coax cable, it moves the antenna correctly without fail every time.

It's a very strange problem. If PC could not move the antenna at all, I would just accept it and move on. But it can move it, just erratically. So I hope I can, with your help, figure out why. Thank you.

Llew

Seems like the card isn't able to supply the motor with enough power, despite the added voltage through the extra connector - probably a borderline voltage issue, as it appears to work intermittently.
Can you check the voltage output at the LNB port somehow when the problem occurs?

Llew

Celebrating Ten Years Of The Forum As A Founder Member

deep0dark

Dear Llew,

Thank you for your kind reply.

I just tried to remove the molex cable from the card, and after about 5 minutes of vigorous clicking I only managed to move the dish a little bit, not enough to move it entirely to the position I requested. So the writing on the wall seems to indicate a power problem.

Then I downloaded a tool to measure power on the motherboard (PC Wizard 2008).

When I use DVB Dream, 12V is measured as 11.19V. When I close DVB Dream, it shows 11.25V. I repeated it many times and it always happens. Interestingly, when I click any DiSEqC movement buttons, the 11.19V stays the same.

Anyway - what is your suggestion if it is 'simply' an issue of not enough power? What can I do to increase power? Should I get a UPS? I cannot shorten the coax cable, I'm on the ground floor and the dish has to be on top of the building due to line of sight.

Thank you very much for your help!

Mladen

Serbia

deep0dark

Sorry, I would not know how to check it... the dish is on the roof of a 4 storey building so I'm reluctant to ask friends to play Philippe Petit while I play with the PC downstairs.

If there was a relatively simple way to push up the power, that would be great. I read something about a "power inserter" but I'm afraid to fry everything if I do something incorrectly.

Llew

It's not the voltage supply to the card that's the problem, it could be the voltage dropping down at the output of the voltage converter chip due to the current loading of the motor.

Without access to this voltage it's going to be difficult to confirm one way or the other. What I would do here is remove the card, trace the LNB supply to the LNB socket and run a wire out of the card so you can use a multimeter for checking the voltage conditions.

Llew

Celebrating Ten Years Of The Forum As A Founder Member

deep0dark

Thank you very much for your message.

I might have understood what needs to be done, but I'm afraid I'd have no idea how to actually do it.

I understood it's important to be sure what exactly the problem is, but if it is indeed a power problem, what do you think my options are?

Llew

As I said, if it's power to the motor that's the problem, and the motor works fine with a receiver, you have to confirm that the voltage is OK by measurement out from the LNB to the motor.

For DiseqC motor command problems, I can't help regarding your Skystar HD card, as I don't use a DiseqC motor with that.

Try DVB Viewer Pro with your HD card if you haven't already, might be a better choice.

Llew

Celebrating Ten Years Of The Forum As A Founder Member

deep0dark

Thank you for your message.

To be honest, to me it is no use confirming that power is too low if there's simply nothing I can do about that. If I know in advance that there's something I can do make the problem go away, I would go through the trouble of asking my satellite guy to measure the power. If there's nothing that can be done about the low power problem, I would simply do what was anyway a non-elegant solution, which is to buy an external controller box or even a decoder which would only be used to switch satellites. If nothing else works out, I will have to do that.

You Knows It

Is it not possible to use an lnb power supply? I don't know whether it would work or not as I have no experience of this thing but technisat do an lnb power supply.

Davor

Hello deep0dark,

I have a similar problem with SS HD2, but different antenna/rotor, so I made a different thread here. I also made amperage measurements with a multimeter.

I am interested whether you solved your problem.

Regards,
Davor